


The Outer Valence

by Thurisaz



Series: All I Have To Say [1]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:55:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22168987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thurisaz/pseuds/Thurisaz
Summary: Prequel work to "All I Have To Say." Viet Nam war AU.
Relationships: Hank McCoy/Alex Summers
Series: All I Have To Say [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595746
Kudos: 16





	The Outer Valence

Hank can’t remember the exact moment when Alex checked out, left, was gone, went flying, and started edging to enlist. “It’s crowded here,” he kept saying, “I need the space, god, I just--Something’s in me, you know?” There was only Charles, Sean, Hank, and Alex in the house at the time. Hank didn’t know, not really.

“Don’t give me that look. Perk up, sweetcheeks,” Alex said. “I can read you like a fucking book, bozo.”

Sean left after a while. Alex got his draft card in the mail. He kissed Hank on the forehead before he snuck out one night after Charles had gone to sleep. “Trust me on this,” he said.

The first letter comes in May, just after Alex had been gone at basic over four weeks. It was smudged from the humidity, but the small block print of Alex’s hand was still legible:

_Bozo. Not much to say. It’s hot as fuck here, or hotter, PFC Cullus had to take a shit break when we were in the bush and he said it was cooler than the fucking air. But still it’s better than being gawked at. There are some okay mutants, I guess._

_-A_

Hank learned, through trial and error and fact-checking, not to question Alex’s euphemisms. He wrote like he spoke, as if he came out of dirt a foul-mouthed growth. “I suppose it’s endearing,” Hank said to Charles a few days later.

Charles didn’t say much then, but when a new card or envelope marked with the red and white of airmail stamps came in, he cracked a smile from behind the sweaty locks of his hair. He looked beaten, blanched from their own oncoming summer heat. Hank gave him an extra dose that day, on Charles’s request.

_Tesla, get this: some Lt Col. was fragged in a hamlet twenty miles south of us. I heard they were scraping bits of him off the tents for days after. Spook stuff._

_They take our blood a lot. Reminds me of Charles’s mansion, I guess. Your lab. You and those fucking glass jars. Beakers? Fuck, I don’t know._

_-A_

A few days later:

_I’m going out today._

_-A_

A chunk of two months where no mail comes made Hank worry. At times he let himself out. He ran, blue and silent on the grounds. He checked the mail while practicing handstands and long jumps. 

At night when Charles is in a stupor of whiskey sours or old fashioneds, Hank tried to guess Alex’s longitude and latitude, what it would take to fix the Blackbird or commandeer a private plane and make it to Viet Nam; what it would take to not get shot down, burned to death, end up a blue smear or a POW in some palm trees and hedgerows for wild pigs to gorge on. But Charles was here. And hiding, and needed Hank’s help.

After an entire summer of dead air another letter arrived. There was a brown stain on the envelope. Alex’s handwriting leaned and stretched wide, like he was shaking while writing. It was brief:

_Bigfoot, it’s still hot. A guy was shot right in the ass. He died._

_-A_

Hank didn’t come out of his room for most of the day. At least, until he heard Charles pleading to have his dose because he forgot it, again, after having his tea and brandy.

A few more letters and fragments came to the house over the next months. Erik was gone, Raven in the wind, Sean--he didn’t know where to start. Alex was there, in the paper, but distant. Said nothing.

_It’s going_

He said in one letter.

_I think I’m still here._

They stopped in October. Hank could feel the pain in his knees from when he hit the Cuban sand at Charles’s side. He felt old, as if his heart and joints wore thin and began to fail. He hadn’t spoken to someone--a real conversation--in seven weeks.

He kept all of Alex’s writings in a book, pressed like violets between the pages so not to lose them. He had that tendency of strategic misplacement since he was small and overly smart. It grounded him, made him turn through every page and sit and think in order to move on. He breathed deep. The house was dusty and hot and tangy with spilled alcohol.

On Thanksgiving Charles was sober, but morose. They play a round of chess but it’s slow-going and muddled. Hank watched as Charles confused the king and the bishop, a rook for a pawn. He pretended to lose. 

They didn't eat anything but old spam and mustard sandwiches because Hank hadn’t gone shopping of any sort in the last month. There was too much room to fill, and they never made a move to fix it all.

The first of December dipped in, already cold and damp. The garden was so overgrown that the gravel turnabout was hidden and the front of the house shadowed by dormant ivy and lilac and jasmine. In the summer Hank could distract himself from the quiet by sitting and drawing the leaves, smelling the kiss of penciled blossoms. But the plants were dead, and would be for a while yet.


End file.
